Eric A. Dawson, a Mississippi native and a University of Mississippi 1908 graduate, began this autograph album and scrapbook in 1918 in Pierrefitte, Lorraine, France. During World War I, Dawson served with YMCA in its Foyers des Sol date (Soldiers Club), and he joined the Army in 1918, rising to the rank of sergeant in the Intelligence Corps.

The books contains signatures, autograph sentiments, musical notations, poems, drawings, sketches, political documents, photographs and wartime ephemera. Many important writers, political and military figures, composers, figures from the arts and sciences, persons from film and stage and sports stars have contributed to Dawson's book, including Ezra Pound, Thomas Mann, Rudyard Kipling, William Faulkner, Winston Churchill, Marshall Foch, John Pershing, Douglas McArthur, Woodrow Wilson, W.C. Handy, Cole Porter, Igor Stavinsky, Iriving Berlin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Howard Chandler Christy, Henri Matisse, Albert Einstein, Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian Gish, Tallulah Bankhead and Jack Dempsey.

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